


Mollymauk Tealeaf is Dead (kind of)

by Ffwydriad



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Ghost Mollymauk Tealeaf, Look beau & molly being platonic soulmates is my whole damn jam, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, i'm not gonna apologize for this fic this is just how it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21861190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ffwydriad/pseuds/Ffwydriad
Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf is dead. His body is lying on the ground, with a glaive through his heart.The problem is, though, that he's standing right there, and Beau's the only one who can see him.(In a world where your soulmates haunt you after they die, Molly and Beau deal with the aftermath of Glory Run Road and everything it means).
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf
Comments: 12
Kudos: 179





	Mollymauk Tealeaf is Dead (kind of)

They are left bloody, bruised, broken. They are left with a body, on the side of the road. 

Mollymauk Tealeaf is dead. He lies still, on the ground, stained with blood he drew and blood that seeps from the chest wound, from the glaive that pins him down. Even if they had a healer, which they don't - oh, they really don't - this isn't something that you can heal from. 

Beau stares forward, wide-eyed and uncertain, stares at him in shock. "Please tell me that one of you sees that," she says. 

She's not looking at the body, lying on the ground, or where Lorenzo and the Iron Shephards make their trail further on, their friends in bound in cages in the back of the wagons. She's staring at the open, empty air. 

"See what?" Nott asks. "Beau, there's nothing there."

"I'm sorry," Caleb says. 

"Fuck," Mollymauk says. 

Because, the problem is, for all that she can see his body, lying there, cold and dead on the ground, she can also see him staring back at her, just a few feet away. 

"I don't even like you," Molly says, cursing in Infernal under his breath. 

"Shut the fuck up, Molly," she hisses back, and she sits down, on the ground, next to his body. Fuck. Fuck. This isn't how this was supposed to go. This wasn't how anything was ever supposed to go. 

"You can see him?" Keg asks. "You can - you can see his ghost?"

Nott's eyes go wide, in awe. "He's haunting you?" she says. "He's your -"

"He's my fucking soulmate," Beau says, pressing her head further into her hands. "What the fuck?"

“Beauregard,” Caleb says, “I know this is a shock, but we need to keep moving.”

“Can you try messing with your body?” Nott asks the empty air that’s almost where Molly is standing. “Maybe you can try and bring yourself back to life or something.”

Molly pokes at his body. Passes through it. Lies down in it.

Nothing.

“Eh,” Molly says. “It was never really mine to begin with, you know.”

“There has to be a cleric in town,” Beau says. “Someone who can-”

“Shady Creek Run isn’t a place that has clerics,” Keg says.

“The best chance to find a cleric would be Zadash,” Caleb says. “We can get there in a week, maybe a bit sooner if we ride fast.”

“You’re not leaving them with those fucking bastards for two weeks,” Molly says. “You don’t leave Yasha with them for two weeks.”

“We check Shady Creek Run,” Beau says. “We’re not leaving them with-”

“Is that what Molly said?” Nott asks.

“We go to Shady Creek Run,” Beau says. “And we do what we can to bring everyone fucking back.”

With one new member, by their side, they ride fast across the border and into Shady Creek run. The ride is deathly silent, all their focus on moving quickly, on not being seen. Asking around, Keg is right, as they knew that she would be. There is nothing, in the town itself, and their only hope is upon being guided to a stranger, to a graveyard. 

Caleb explains the situation with a calm, stern voice, and Caduceus Clay looks upon them with sadness, and informs them that there is nothing he can do.

"Alright," Molly says. "Loot my fucking body, and let's get them out of there."

"We may still be able to make it to Zadash in time," Caleb suggests. "If we are quick enough - there is still the sliver of a chance that it may work."

"Molly says stay," Beau says. 

"I'm afraid I can't allow your friend to be buried on the temple grounds," Caduceus tells them. "But I can bury him outside the gates, and I swear that I will tend to his grave as well, when I return to this place."

They all say words. Keg, briefly. Nott and Caleb, the words choked out. Caduceus, an offered prayer. Molly is quiet, throughout, not quite watching the proceedings. He laughs, for some, makes snide comments, occasionally, and every time it looks like they might be laying him down to rest, he makes sure to yell appropriately. 

"Shut up, I'll take your stuff, geez," she says, and tries to ignore the sharp sound of his laugh as she presses her fingers against dead skin to remove what treasures he has.

She doesn't give a eulogy. She sits there, and watches the body go into the ground. 

Nott is the only one who cries. They aren't the sort of people who cry. Maybe she would, too, if she didn't have Molly hanging over her shoulder. 

It's hard to mourn someone who isn't gone. 

The only thing she takes from him is the tarot cards. The rest goes into the haversack, save for the periapt, which goes around Caleb's neck. 

"Look, Beau!" Molly says, standing next to him. "Caleb stole my heart!"

She ignores him. She gets the feeling that she's going to be ignoring him a lot.

* * *

Molly acts as their scout, through the Sour Nest. He's not quite physical, and they learn that he can pass through walls just fine, so he's able to lead them down well enough without much trouble. 

On their long ride back to Zadash, escorting Ophelia Mardun, things start going poorly, as if they'd ever been going well. Beau's been riding on horseback, quiet, keeping her eyes out on the road, and Molly's been sitting in the back of the cart, and if he could've, he'd've been holding Yasha. 

When Yasha wakes up - when she bursts out of the cart - Beau jumps off the horse and runs for her, tries to say something, although she isn't sure what. The air crackles with electricity, and instead Yasha is gone, once more vanished to the winds. 

She almost thinks Molly is going to yell at her.

"It's probably better for her," he says. 

"I was supposed to stay with her," he says. 

He lies down in the cart for the rest of the time until they make it back to Zadash. She doesn't make eye contact, and neither does he, and she pretends not to flinch every time she glances over, watching the others shift, watching as they pass through him. 

Molly doesn't follow them down, as they finish their deal with the Gentleman. 

She almost talks to him, when they come up. We told Cree you were dead, she almost says. Ophelia made the Gentleman give us blood money, over you, she almost says. 

"I'm going to go training in the Cobalt Soul," she tells Caleb, as Fjord rides off, and that's how she spends her month. 

* * *

At first, she's back at the Inn at a reasonable hour, and they all eat dinner together - save Molly, who isn't eating anything, but tends to be sitting in the empty chair that Jester has left out for him at their table. At first, they pretend like everything is okay, and they talk about their days while they wait for Fjord to come back, wait to decide their next job. But they keep asking about him, and so she stops making dinner, stops coming back in time to do anything but pass out on the ground. 

At first, it's fine. at first, she sees Molly tailing Jester, or watching strangers, and she's able to pretend that everything's fine, even though she knows that nothing is ever going to be okay again.

The arguments start barely after a week in Zadash. They aren't even arguments. To be arguments, she'd have to be arguing back. Really, it's just Molly yelling. At first, it's small things, grumbled out ranting, but soon enough he's yelling, waking her up in the dead of night, and no one else, because it isn't as if they can hear him. 

"I fucking hate this!" Molly yells. "Why the fuck did you have to be soulmate, instead of - instead of just letting me die like a normal person!" His hands pass through objects without a trace, not even a faint breeze to ruffle fabric. He can still cry, though, his voice can still get hoarse, and she presses her head into the pillows while Molly screams, "Talk to me! Coward! Talk to me!"

A better person, a Jester or a Caduceus, or even a Fjord or a Nott or a Caleb, they'd be talking to him. They'd be doing their best to help a friend going through a tough situation - and what's tougher than facing the fact that you're dead? But she's not anything like them. It shouldn't have been her.

She stops sleeping, and the Cobalt Soul notices. And stupid fucking monks with their stupid high perceptions, she gets asked what's wrong. And maybe it's how tired, she is, or maybe it's a sign that she's started to slightly trust them, but she explains the whole thing.

Expositor Tubo teaches her how to punch ghosts. 

She doesn't stay late, that night. She heads back to the tavern, and she tracks down Molly, where he's been sulking, and with the focused energy in her hands, she reaches out, to grab his wrist and pull him up from where he lies on the floor. 

It works. 

It works, and she's standing there, holding Molly's wrist. It's a strange sensation, because it doesn't feel solid, but there's a pressure there, and she knows she's grabbing something, something that her hand won't pass through. Molly stares at her, eyes wide, with the glee that can only be seen on the face of someone who hasn't felt anything in a month.

"You can touch me," he says. 

"Yeah," Beau says. "How cool is that shit?"

"You didn't used to - that's new. That's new." 

She lets the ki fade from her touch, her hand passing through his arm, and then she focuses herself once more, and grabs his hand. "It's a technique that's meant to be used for fighting ghosts," she explains. "And you can't punch what you can't touch. Which means."

"You can touch me," Molly repeats. "I take everything back - no I don't I meant everything - but you're the best soulmate ever." He pulls her into a hug, and before she can even think to spread the focused Ki to her entire body instead of just her hand, he's passing through her. 

Except, he doesn't pass through her. He passes into her. 

She presses her eyes close, and she doesn't open them, but they blink open anyways. _The fuck_ \- she thinks, and she hears an echo. _Did you know we could do this_? She doesn't think, but she hears it anyways. She doesn't know who raises her hand to touch her face, but it happens, and she knows that she's at least one of the smiles across her face. 

"Let's get drunk as fuck," she says, and the laughter spills across her mind and out her lips. 

* * *

The only thing weirder than being possessed is being drunk in the possessed - at least, that's what Beau thinks, until she tries being high and possessed, and altogether, everything about her life is just fucking insane right now, and she can't stop smiling. Molly even stays with her through the hang over - which is a hell of a hangover. Except, it should be much, much worse, they both know from experience, which is what prompts them to start experimenting with the possession. 

Experimenting, for the most part, involves getting a bunch of Cobalt Soul monks to beat her up - them up? - to the point of unconsciousness, to figure out exactly how much tougher she is in a fight while Molly's possessing her. The answer is, in fact, quite a bit, although she wakes up feeling strange, and it leaves Molly winded as well, but she's going to take any advantage in a fight she can get.

The other thing they learn, is that Molly can still focus on talking while she's focused on fighting, which she discovers after burning infernal words that she can't understand - except, she can hear the intent behind them, rough-hewn, in her mind - spill forth from her lips, and she watches as the trainees wince with a manic grin. " _ **Let's see**_ ," Molly hisses out, and it doesn't quite sound the same, on her throat, but it's still undeniably his voice. " _ **The Cobalt Soul is a bunch of nerds!**_ "

If anyone can understand what he's saying, they don't react. Beau reacts, though, and she laughs in infernal. She laughs, and for the first time in a month, she's starting to think that maybe there's a chance things won't be horrible forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> i've been sitting on this fic idea for...almost a year now? man that's kind of crazy. i'm always a sucker for soulmate aus, especially platonic soulmates and unconventional aus, and after i saw one w/ this premise, I knew I had to write one with Molly, and Beau & Molly is a seriously underrepresented friendship. mostly because he's dead. 
> 
> also, i don't know if either of them would go for it, but beau in a blue version of molly's coat is an Excellent look.
> 
> i'm @malaismere on tumblr and i apologize for nothing.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Mollymauk Tealeaf is Dead (kind of)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675965) by [lunalma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunalma/pseuds/lunalma)




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